Since stories have started surfacing more recently, many have wondered, if the rumors are true. Are there really 'continents', or massivefloating garbage patches residing in the pacific ocean? Apparently, the rumors are true, and these unsightly patches are reportedlykilling marine life and releasing poisons that enter the human food chain, as well. However, before you start imagining a plastic version of Maui, keep in mind that these plastic patches certainly aren'tsolid surfaced islands that you could build a house on! Ocean currents have collected massive amounts of garbage into a sort of plastic "soup" where countless bits of discarded plastic float intertwined just beneath the surface. Indeed, the human race has really made its mark. One enormous plastic patch is estimated to weigh over 3 million tons altogether and cover an area roughly twice the size of Texas.

But if there is an unfathomably massive collection of plastic junk out there, then why doesn't everyone already know about it, and why aren't we doing something about it? Well, there are several reasons. First, no one is keen to claim responsibility for these monstrosities, which exists in one of the most remote spots on the planet. It's easier to ignore than to deal with, at least in the short term. Most of theplastic is floating just below the surface where explorers, researchers, and scientists can get a good close-up view, but it is nearly impossible to see the massive quantities of submerged trash inphotographs taken from great distances. This makes it easier for naysayers to disregard the problem as a mere myth, in spite of all of the well-documented research to the contrary. Clean up seems nearlyimpossible at this point, so even those who are well aware of the situation have adopted the famous ostrich cliche of burying their heads in the sand. Even so, this polluted, chemical filled junk is finding it's way onto our dinner tables.

Sadly, marine researcher Charles Moore at the Algalita Marina
Research Foundation in Long Beach says there’s no practical fix for the
problem. He has been studying the massive patch for the past 10 years,
and said the debris is to the point where it would be nearly impossible
to extract.

"Any attempt to remove that much plastic from the oceans - it
boggles the mind," Moore said from Hawaii, where his crew is docked.
"There's just too much, and the ocean is just too big."

The trash collects in this remote area, known as the North Pacific
Gyre, due to a clockwise trade wind that encircles the Pacific Rim.
According to Moore the trash accumulates the same way bubbles clump at
the center of hot tub.

Ian Kiernan, the Australian founder of Clean Up the World, started
his environmental campaign two decades ago after being shocked by the
incredible amount of rubbish he saw on an around-the-world solo yacht
race. He'll says he’ll never be able the wipe the atrocious site from
his memory.

"It was just filled with things like furniture, fridges, plastic
containers, cigarette lighters, plastic bottles, light globes,
televisions and fishing nets," Kiernan says. "It's all so durable it
floats. It's just a major problem."

Kiernan says it’s killing wildlife in a vicious cycle. Holding an
ashtray filled with colorful pieces of plastic he told The Sydney
Morning Herald, "this is the contents of a fleshy-footed shearwater's
stomach. They go to the ocean to fish but there ain't no fish - there's
plastic. They then regurgitate it down the necks of their fledglings
and it kills them. After the birds decompose, the plastic gets washed
back into the ocean where it can kill again. It's a form of ghost
fishing, where it goes on and on."

A Dutch study in the North Sea of fulmar seabirds concluded 95 per
cent of the birds had plastic in their stomachs. More than 1600 pieces
were found in the stomach of one bird in Belgium.

The United Nations Environment Program says plastic is accountable
for the deaths of more than a million seabirds and more than 100,000
marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and seals every year.

Since his first encounter with the gyre in 1997, Moore created the
Algalita Marine Research Foundation to help study the problem. Canadian
filmmaker Ian Connacher joined Moore last year to film the garbage
patch for his documentary, I Am Plastic.

"The most menacing part is those little bits of plastic start
looking like food for certain animals, or the filter feeders don't have
any choice, they just pick them up," noted Connacher.

Perhaps an even bigger problem is hiding beneath the surface of the
islands of garbage. Greenpeace reports that about 70 per cent of the
plastic that makes it to the ocean sinks to the bottom, where it then
smothers marine life on the ocean floor. Dutch scientists have found
600,000 tons of discarded plastic on the bottom of the North Sea alone.

A study by the Japanese geochemist Hideshige Takada and his
colleagues at Tokyo University in 2001 found that plastic polymers soak
up the resilient poisons such as DDT and polychlorinated biphenyls. The
researchers found that non-water-soluble toxic chemicals can be found
in plastic in levels as high as a million times their concentration in
water. As small pieces of plastic are mistaken for fish eggs and other
food by marine life, these toxins end up at the dinner table. But even
without the extra toxins, eating plastic is hazardous to health.

It is estimated that 80 per cent of plastic found at sea is washed
out from the land. The journal Science last year predicted seafood
stocks would collapse by 2048 if overfishing and pollution continued.
If the seafood stocks collapse, a lot of humans will follow. So, is
there anything we can do to prevent this?

Greenpeace says embracing the three Rs - reduce, re-use and recycle
- would help tackle the problem. Plastic recycling is lagging well
behind paper and cardboard. Part of the reason is because many people
aren’t even sure what recycling options exist in their area. But there
are other challenges for plastic recycling too. Some plastics release
toxic chemicals into the atmosphere, and are more expensive to recycle
than to simply create a new product from petrochemicals.

The widespread use of bioplastics could largely reduce the amount of
plastic strewn around the world. Traditional petrochemical-based
plastics are non-degradable and non-renewable; degradable plastic
breaks into smaller pieces in UV light but remains plastic. Then there
are two kinds of biodegradable plastic that break down in compost - one
from a petrochemical resource, the other from a renewable resource such
as corn or wheat, which is known as bioplastic. Bioplastic is by far
the most environmentally friendly option. Dr Katherine Dean, of the
CSIRO, says corporate firms are now becoming increasingly interested in
bioplastics.

"When oil prices soared in 2005, that changed a lot of people's
perspective, because bioplastic became quite cost-competitive," she
says. "All of a sudden it wasn't just about doing the right thing."

The company Plantic Technologies, has developed biodegradable
plastic for everything from food and beverage packaging to medical,
agricultural and sporting applications. The chief executive of Plantic,
Grant Dow, says once composted, the plastic would become nothing more
than carbon dioxide and water.

"For all intents and purposes, it looks like plastic and feels like
plastic and does the same thing as plastic in the application," he says.

"It will only biodegrade in the presence of heat, moisture and
bacteria, so it will sit in your cupboard pretty much indefinitely, but
when the bacteria get to it in compost, that's it. It's gone."

While parts of our oceans have already become inhospitable soups of
plastic and plankton, we can at least mitigate the future consequences
by making smart individual choices. Experts say the best way to
mitigate the damage down the road is by buying less products that
contain plastics or plastic packaging, recycling, lobbying for safer
bio-degradable plastics, and by purchasing reusable cloth grocery bags
among other strategies.

Comments

Thanks for the article. I don't think the average american considers the consequences of their day to day decisions. Now that I have a little education I will do my best to be a better & wiser consumer. This was an eye opener to me. It was always out of sight and out of my mind. But now I know I will be thinking when I go shopping.

Very interesting article.
The sad thing is that there doesn't seem to be any real solution regarding this floating garbage except for not making it worse.
Personally, I have been refusing as much as possible plastic bags when I don't need one or when I have my big reusable Ikea bag for the grocery.
However, even though the right thing to do might be not to buy and raise one's voice to the manufacturer, it's almost impossible to avoid useless plastic packagings. It's especially true for small items where the packaging takes probably up to 5-10 times as much room as what's inside the box (e.g. cables).

"While parts of our oceans have already become inhospitable soups of plastic and plankton, we can at least mitigate the future consequences by making smart individual choices."

No we can't! *I* have never contributed any significant amount of plastic to the ocean. Me and you aren't significant. Me and you and everyone who reads this blog isn't significant. If we cut the amount of plastic by 1/3 (what would be a hugely successful campaign), we'll still be producing a lot of plastic and all the existing plastic will be there too.

Only collective action (governmental, regulatory) can make any kind of dent in something like this.

Indeed... I was thinking the same thing while I read the article..."why are they having to use artist renderings of what trash in the pacific might look like?" wouldn't it be easier to take a snapshot with a digital camera? Or maybe get fancy and use some of those cool underwater cameras? Since the images are made up, I tend to think the rest is made up too... show me the money shot!

This is very sad. But it's true about plastic being very difficult to recycle, especially in the U.S. residential market where many haulers and processors just can't be bothered with it. We're good in most communities for glass and metals, but we need to improve our percentage of plastics recycled - this is just more proof.

When Oil was first discovered, much of it was discarded as waste material. Perhaps we can use the long net trawlers to harvest this resource. As soon as the value of refuse plastic becomes commercially feasable, a new industry will be born.

Individuals can make a difference. A wildlife camerawoman was so horrified by the effects of plastic pollution she saw while filming in Hawaii, she persuaded her local community to ban the use of plastic bags. The town took it on and now the idea is spreading across the UK - even big cities are talking about how they could implement it.

More "Greenie"Leftist Propaganda, Designed to scare the plastic diapers off of the "Humans are bad"crybaby crowd!....Incredible claims require incredible proof!...And the "Greenies"that would have you digest this "Island of Lies"can't even produce a picture!....Which by the way , is not Proof!

Well at least it gives the fish a place to hide from predators from above like seagulls...In fact these rafts of rubbish may act like floating reefs to protect fish....let's put a positive spin on this okay?.....now let's bury our heads in the sand agian alright?...

I am at heart an individual who recycles and tries to be environmentally minded, but it bothers me when others that are of this mindset resort to outright LIES!!! Yes there is garbage floating in the oceans but not an island nor a continent! Could we not find it on GOOGLE EARTH? is there no satellites anymore? Do we not have GPS and Digital Camera's? The earth needs us to be aware of our destruction we are causing, not to generate more lies and half-truths.

These aren't actually 'islands' floating above the sea; they are like oil slicks spreading across the surface, but dissolved plastics instead of oil. Satellites cannot photograph the regions from space because the plastics do not reflect light.

To take a photo of this would result in a picture of the ocean. To the observer, it looks the same as it did yesterday, last week or last year. The "sea" is made up of lots of small pieces of plastic. It enters the food chain via the bottom feeders and magnifies its way up to us at the top.

Plastics have only been invented for the last 150 years and only been commercially used for the last 50 years or so. EVERY piece of plastic ever produced still exists today. Knowing that we humans litter with impunity and don't really care where our trash ends up, how then does this get labeled as "leftist greenie propaganda"?

The worlds oceans are MASSIVE!. It will take years before we can fill them up with plastic and other garbage. Lets not worry about a few bottles floating around. As long as we reserve some space for the fish, and we can still sail boats and ships then there is no need to give this problem a second thought.

I read about this in the germs, guns and steel book, very interesting, I also posted this url on my blog, with a few extra comments, www.opentopix.com/topic/other/are-all-the-continents-floating-or-solid

" The United Nations Environment Program says plastic is accountable for the deaths of more than a million seabirds and more than 100,000 marine mammals such as whales, dolphins and seals every year "

We dont eat any of this stuff so it's not really our problem anyway. These animals will probably evolve and learn that it is not good to eat plastic and rubbish. If they would only just stick to eating their normal diet they will be fine. I always thought dolphins were supposed to be clever anyhow.

It's such a shame that people are so ignorant as to dismiss all the evidence in the article as "greenie leftist propaganda" - I wonder whether they even bothered to try to read it. The trouble is it doesn't matter how many others try to take care of the environment, these dinosaurs will go on trashing our world and the fish and animals and then us will all go the way of the original dinosaurs.